I would disagree fairly strongly: “lobbyists are absolutely dependent on democratic institutions to leverage their wealth into political power, while 50,000 angry people with pitchforks are not”
They are, I think. If they are angry that democracy is ignoring them then their pitchforks will likely not manage to enact some complicated change to legislation needed to fix the problem, as you point out. If we care about power to actually make a change about the things people want to happen, this is vested almost entirely within the hands of the elite and not within pitchforks. Pitchforks could maybe scare elites into doing it, but more likely it just generates chaos. Because pitchforks are not the tool for the job. The tools for the job are held by the elites and they refuse to use them accordingly.
I’m living through this day by day here in Britain. People protest all over the country every day and the government, despite knowing which positions have majority support, just do the opposite continuously and use every mechanism available to delay or obfuscate meaningful change.
I would disagree fairly strongly: “lobbyists are absolutely dependent on democratic institutions to leverage their wealth into political power, while 50,000 angry people with pitchforks are not”
They are, I think. If they are angry that democracy is ignoring them then their pitchforks will likely not manage to enact some complicated change to legislation needed to fix the problem, as you point out. If we care about power to actually make a change about the things people want to happen, this is vested almost entirely within the hands of the elite and not within pitchforks. Pitchforks could maybe scare elites into doing it, but more likely it just generates chaos. Because pitchforks are not the tool for the job. The tools for the job are held by the elites and they refuse to use them accordingly.
I’m living through this day by day here in Britain. People protest all over the country every day and the government, despite knowing which positions have majority support, just do the opposite continuously and use every mechanism available to delay or obfuscate meaningful change.